


That One's Just Right

by Barkour



Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Fairy Tale Retellings, M/M, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-16
Updated: 2015-07-16
Packaged: 2018-04-09 14:36:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,560
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4352672
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Barkour/pseuds/Barkour
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>As for wicked Dorian, did he ever learn not to break into someone else's home and eat their porridge and sleep in their bed?</p>
            </blockquote>





	That One's Just Right

As, wearily, he trundled without end through the godless woods - how the sun did shine brightly through the trees! How the birds did sing their merry songs! How the rocks did jangle in his boots! - Dorian did at last come upon a sturdy stone house set upon the mountain.

"Oh, thank God," he said, "a miracle. If ever I doubted you, Maker of this world, you have my sincerest apologies."

A bird with a disconcerting baritone sang at Dorian. He took this as divine acknowledgement and promptly threw all lingering doubts as to the nature of God in his heaven to the summer breeze. 

He knocked twice at the door, waited on the step for a courtly three counts of _Free Marches Madness_ , and let himself in. Well, surely the homeowners didn't wish to come home to a beautiful man insensate upon the step, his fine features and fit, muscular form ravaged beyond salvation by thirst and the afternoon sun. 

What coolness awaited him inside! What sweet shadows! Dorian shucked first his pack then his boots then the rocks from his boots then his staff, carefully set on the rack beside the door. The stone floor chilled his poor toes, and Dorian sighed. He did appreciate a house constructed for the civilized necessities. 

He also appreciated a well-stocked kitchen. A great heap of dishes filled a basin upon the long counter. These he ignored. No washwoman, Dorian of House Pavus! A few dishes remained on the huge table, hot meals left to cool. No one could fault a man, starved from the wilderness, eating just a tad. 

He sipped at a bowl of chicken and carrot soup and found it briny as the sea. He pecked at a dish of porridge and recoiled; had no one heard of cinnamon? Cardamom? Surely the pickled fish that had made the soup could have spared a pinch of salt. He nibbled lastly at a meaty pot pie set at the head of the table, and then Dorian must have blacked out from the physical rigors of hiking because he blinked and the whole pie was gone.

"Well!" he said. "I don't know what happened there!" He brushed the crumbs from his lips then ate those too. Piously, he covered his mouth to burp. "Waste not, want not," he said.

Of course, after that he simply had to lie down, and nothing would do for it but a proper bed. Oh, the nights in the woods! The stars all gleaming overhead! The cool night winds, whispering their lullabies as they carried deep, old fragrances from the very heart of the forest! God, he'd hated it.

The stairs very nearly defeated him, but like a hero of old, Dorian overcame. The maze of doors that greeted him at the top did confuse him, but no hero would shy from such a challenge. He steeled his resolve; he firmed his gut; he kicked away a pebble that had stuck in his stocking, between his big toe and the next toe down.

The first room he tried looked promising. The floor was a mess, the window shutters ajar, and the bed unmade. Dorian collapsed upon it. This was not the bed he wanted. His feet stuck a good twelve or twenty inches off the end of it. He made the bed before he went, though.

The second room looked promising, too: food dishes were stacked on the sill, and three arrows jutted out of the foot-board. "Ha," he muttered, "I've got you now," and elegantly he cast himself upon the sheets. This was not the bed he wanted either. Several long blonde hairs marked the pillow, but this was of the least concern. Beds, thought Dorian philosophically as he checked for wounds, were not a place one should keep knives. Especially not upwards of thirty of them. 

Now the third room he tried, the one with the scarred doorframe, that proved the best of the lot. The bed was massive, a truly stupendous creation of solid oak, vastly over-stuffed mattresses, at least two, and several blankets, many trimmed in pink lace, others worn quilts patched over the years. Dorian peeled his stockings off and tossed them to the corner, and then he tossed himself to the bed. Yes, he thought, this was it. This was the bed for Dorian. Even the smell of it, tangy and sweat-spiced and somehow rumpled, was right. 

"Just right," he sighed, and he wiggled under the topmost quilt. He fit very nicely to the colossal depression left in the middle of the top mattress. Dorian inhaled deeply of the bed's smell and drifted into very pleasant dreams that I've no intention of confessing.

But what of the family that lived in that sturdy stone house? Well, as families went, they were very untraditional, but in this changing, growing world of modern Thedas, isn't that what's most traditional? A troop of laughing, burly soldier of fortune types descended upon the house, each of them sweated and grimy and cheery after a good morning of hard training. Those who'd skipped their breakfast, or hadn't finished all of it, were very eager to get to it. 

A tall elf with long, blonde hair studied her spoon. "Someone," she said, "has been drinking my soup. Grim!"

The man in question merely held up his bowl of porridge for all to see. 

"Someone," said Dalish, "has been eating Grim's porridge. Rocky!"

"Hey!" said Rocky. 

The largest of all these dirty rapscallions - a qunari thick of form, patched of eye, and sporting more scar than your standard flesh - stood alone at the head of the table, his hands knuckled upon the table's edge. He looked at his plate: looted, pillaged, desecrated.

"Some asshole ate my meat pot pie," said the Bull, indignant. "That was a good meat pot pie!"

"You can tell," said his lieutenant, Krem, "because they ate all of it."

"I was _saving_ it," said the Bull.

An elf climbing the stairs suddenly yelped. "Who the fuck left rocks on the stairs?"

"Rocky," said Dalish.

"That's stereotyping," said Rocky. "That's hurtful."

"Oi, come see this!"

The whole sweaty lot of them trudged up the stairs, where a few of them got stuck till someone suggested a single file line. By that time the forerunners had discovered someone had been sleeping in Rocky's bed. 

"They made my bed," said Rocky, "who does that? That's creepy, and unnatural. You think I've got a secret admirer?"

Another elf, this one with black hair and somehow suggestive of slit throats, stood in another doorway. 

"Someone's been sleeping in my bed too," she said.

"Yes, me," said Dalish. "Or did you forget already? I thought we had something special, Skinner."

"Look." Skinner pointed. "They knocked my knives to the floor."

"Well, that was rude," said Dalish, and everyone agreed; it was very rude. You couldn't just make someone's bed or throw all their bed knives on the floor. That was simply un-neighborly.

"Hey, chief," said Krem suddenly, "where you going?"

The Bull pushed his door open. He made sure to knock it against the wall, just the once. In the bed, Dorian stirred. He stuck his head up. 

"Nice hair," said the Bull.

Dorian rubbed at his eyes. "It's the new in look for, for summer." A yawn interrupted him.

"Oh," said Stitches, "it's only Dorian."

"I knew it," said Dalish. 

Krem closed the door on Rocky's outraged face, leaving the Bull to deal with this shameless intruder.

"Didn't expect you back yet."

Dorian laid down again upon his back and stretched, his chest swelling and arms spread wide. "It was horrendous. I think I've disjointed my back. Somehow, every night, I managed to lay my bag on the same boulder, no matter how far I'd walked."

"Everything go okay at the symposium?"

"Well enough," said Dorian. "But it is good to be home again."

The Bull was smiling. He shucked his harness and left it on top of Dorian's discarded stockings, and on bare feet he made his way to the bed and Dorian alone in it, waiting for the Bull.

"What," said Dorian, "no kiss? No p-passionate embrace?"

"You're gonna make me yawn."

Dorian finished. "You could always wake me up."

"Mmmm," said the Bull. Sitting on the edge of the bed, his bum leg stretched before him, the Bull stooped to kiss Dorian soft upon the lips. Dorian's breath stuttered. The week's wild growth of curling stubble rasped at the Bull's jaw. 

"Nah," the Bull murmured to Dorian's red lips. "You need to rest up first."

"I can rest later."

"Not after what I'm gonna do to you," the Bull promised. "Traitorous 'vint. You ate my breakfast."

Dorian, his sleepy eyes lidding, smiled. He formed each word with deliberate care: "It was delicious." The tip of his tongue flashed out between his teeth at the end, and the Bull caught it with his own teeth. Dorian gasped. His thick, strong arms rose up; he caught the Bull's horns in his broad hands. 

"Yeah, forget that," said the Bull, "payback now, rest later."

"Oh, no," said Dorian, puffing his chest out and arching his throat, "I never should have trespassed. How very thoughtless of me. How inconsiderate."

Dorian learned a very good lesson that day, but I regret to say he never did stop sleeping in the Bull's bed.


End file.
